September First
by PadfootProngsandMoony'sGirl
Summary: Tonks has a run-in with the manager of King's Cross her first time going to Hogwarts. One-shot.


Mr. King was exactly what every man planned on being when he grew up. He had been married nearly twenty years to a beautiful young woman he had met at the age of nineteen at the University. She was the sweetest thing, in both looks and personality, always wearing a sunny smile as she curled her blonde hair and applied mascara to the eyelashes of a pair of gorgeous blue orbs. Her figure, in spite of having birthed three children, stayed neat and trim, regardless of any stress she was put under or cakes served at Christmastime.

His oldest son Johnny was eleven years old now, and would be starting his secondary education that year. He was athletic, liked by very nearly everyone, and never ceased to please his doting parents.

Parker was eight, and though his skills on the rugby field left a bit to be desired, his test scores did not. He was just like his mother: smart and gentle and brilliant under pressure.

His youngest, Jewel, had just turned six., In those six years she had managed to wrap her father three times around her adorable little pinky finger and then some. All she had to do was blink up at him with those pretty little doe eyes of hers, and his heart melted.

Mr. King's father—also called Mr. King—had been the owner of the popular and widely used King's Cross station, and his father before him. He had grown up around trains, learning from a very young age exactly how they worked and what it took to control one. Naturally, when his father had finally relinquished hold in the place, he ran it from first day as though he had been in the position for decades.

Mr. King himself was quite the charmer. He smiled and waved at nearly every human being he'd ever set eyes on when he met them in passing. He kept up with all his old school friends. He never spanked his children and rarely shouted, and yet all three of them behaved like they'd been raised in an etiquette class. It was rather as if Mr. King had a dozen guardian angels watching him constantly on all sides, keeping anything even remotely negative from happening to him, save for the occasional argument with his wife, driving ticket, or rainy day.

Except…there was one hole in the angels' shield. One tiny, insignificant hole and, though nothing _truly_ negative had ever come from it, Mr. King was absolutely paranoid that someday it would be the snowball that rolled until it became an avalanche. You see, ever since he was a boy, for as long as he could remember, September 1sts had been…odd.

There was no other word for it. Every year, on the first of September, things simply seemed _strange._ It was like a rift in time; the same things happened again and again.

First, there were fewer passengers. It seemed like at least a third of his usual number of passengers avoided the place that day out of pure intuition. At yet every year the station looked nearly twice as crowded. But not with passengers. Or at least, he didn't _think_ they were passengers. They never bought any actual tickets and none of them ever showed up on one of his trains. But every year, on September the first, midday, they swarmed about the station like great colonies of ants.

Who, you ask? Mr. King didn't exactly know, to be honest. They were mysteries to him, and no matter how many years he'd had to figure them out, he simply could not do it. Kids, teenagers of all ages, sometimes accompanied by adults and sometimes not. They all seemed to know each other; either running to embrace like family or ignoring each other so pointedly and rudely that they _had _to have exchanged words before. Their parents did more of the same, dragging their children along with them for a chat with some obviously old friends, or exchanging curt nods and hurriedly heading in the opposite direction.

If you looked at the kids individually you would see nothing out of the ordinary. The girls walked around in tank tops and short shorts and minimal make-up for fear of sweating it off, looking just like every other girl in the late summer. The boys bounded about wearing t-shirts and trainers without socks, shouting and cursing and causing all the havoc of your everyday teenage boy.

But then you saw what they carried.

Or pushed, rather. Large carts, like they were grocery shopping, only instead of food it was luggage. Lots and lots and lots of luggage, every one of them with a giant trunk and usually another few smaller ones. Sometimes they had an owl or toad in a cage or a cat snuggling in their arms. To see it you would think they were homeless.

Their parents were strange too, always cloaked in strange robes of bold color, like a cult. They brandished sticks of all sizes, waving them at totally random and insignificant things they didn't seem sure about like some sort of weapon. As they walked with their children to whatever destination it was, they shouted strange things. Phrases like 'muggle', 'Hogwarts', and 'platform nine and three quarters' were heard a lot.

Of course there was no such platform.

There was never a time that Mr. King looked forward to the date, but this September 1st it just so happened that Mr. King was feeling particularly agitated. It was as if God himself, upon discovering the intense dread Mr. King felt for the day, had decided that since he was going to be miserable anyway, he might as well dish it all out.

And dish it out he had.

Mr. King woke up that morning two hours before his alarm was set to go off. Whether it was due to the murderous thunderstorm raging outside or his wife vomiting noisily down the hall, he could not figure out. All he knew was that neither were good omens.

By the time he had left for work he was even more certain of the fact. His wife, uncommonly ill, had committed herself to the bed for the day, leaving her husband to deal with preparing the kids for their first day of school. Which didn't turn out to be a problem for his eldest, as Johnny had caught the bug as well and so was getting an extended summer vacation. A fact that absolutely infuriated his younger siblings, both of whom were angered that their brother got to miss school and they did not.

They found the sheen of sweat on his face and his inability to keep anything down for longer than half an hour surprisingly easy to overlook.

It was a miracle when, after getting their elderly neighbor to care for Johnny and his wife and dropping off Parker and Jewel at school, he made it to work on time.

Only to find that he had left his lunch at home. Not only that, but his wallet seemed to have eaten his credit card, his debit card, and all traces of cash. The hail outside-hail! In the summer!-though fierce and loud, was apparently even fiercer up North, and the terminal in Yorkshire had been closed for the day. It took him three hours of yelling, shouting, kicking, negotiating, and one whopping headache to get all of his trains that were stopping there to change their course and to alert the passengers of the fact.

By noon, Mr. King was fed up. He stormed out of his office, striding purposefully to a pub. True, he had no money, but even the smell of whiskey would calm his nerves at a time like this. Mr. King did not consider himself an ill-tempered man, but today he would have admitted freely that he was in a foul mood. How could he not be, when he was hungry, his family was sick, he was losing business, and _they_ were everywhere he looked?

_WHAM!_

Mr. King suddenly found himself on the floor, his head pounding more than ever and the rest of him not feeling too great either. He sat up groggily, feeling even worse than before, although five minutes ago he would have sworn such a thing was not possible. He looked around for the culprit of his pain, only to find that he had been cheated yet again. He couldn't get cross with a mere _child._

That was who had knocked him over. Or at least, that was what she seemed to be. Her body and face were immature, perhaps that of a girl who was between ten and twelve years old. But her hair was that of an older, punkish teenager. Half of it was a spiky bubble gum pink; the other half was shaggy and turquoise. She too was sprawled out on the floor, though she seemed to be taking the impact much more gracefully than he.

She propped herself up on her shoulder and smiled tentatively at him. "_Really_ sorry," she said sheepishly. "I'm completely clumsy- and I'm just so lost, you know? It's my first time here," she explained.

Mr. King nodded, too dazed to speak.

"Nymphadora Tonks," The girl muttered resentfully, holding out a hand. Mr. King took it half heartedly out of habit. "Tragic name, I know, but what can I do? It's the one my mother gave me. Speaking of my mother, she really is a numb chuck, I'm beginning to realize. She just dropped me off here and drove off, without giving me directions or anything! I'm probably going to miss my train."

This alerted Mr. King a little. "Don't worry, erm…." What was that name she'd said?

"Tonks," Tonks said helpfully.

"Er. Right." That was the strangest name he had ever heard. "I run this place. I know every time, platform, and location there is."

"Do you really?" Tonks said eagerly. "All right then. It's the eleven o clock train to Hogwarts, platform nine and three quarters?"

Mr. King stared mutely. Suddenly, a cart a few feet behind the girl caught his eye. It was loaded down with one huge trunk and was rolling slowly away. Perched on top of it was a large cage that housed the biggest owl Mr. King had ever seen in his life. He groaned loudly and lay back down, wishing he could just have a tantrum, right there in the middle of a station. There was no train that left at eleven o'clock, he had never heard of Hogwarts, and platform nine and three quarters _did not exist!_

He should have known by her hair that she was one of _them._

"Nymphadora!" A woman with three squabbling children stopped suddenly, calling to the girl with a pinched look on her face. "What are you doing? Where's your mother?"

Tonks shrugged. "She drove here. Didn't want to get out of the car in the rain," she yelled back.

The woman's shoulders slumped, and her eyes rolled. "Honestly, that woman—" she stopped, her eyes falling suspiciously on Mr. King. "What have you done to this poor man?"she demanded, slapping the prying hand of one of her children away.

"Mum, we're going to be _late_," he whined.

"Hush," she said, keeping her eyes on Tonks.

"His name is Mister King!" said Tonks helpfully. "He manages the train station!"

The woman's face paled, and before Mr. King knew it she was next to them both, pulling Tonks away from him and dusting her off, hissing something in the child's ear that looked a lot like the lectures his wife gave to his own children sometimes.

When she turned back to Mr. King, he felt his heart grow still. She had one of them with her. One of those…those _sticks. _Harmless, of course, but something about it made him feel suddenly very nervous. So nervous, in fact, that his hairs stood on end and he found his arms and legs scrambling back of their own accord.

"_Memorium_," she murmured, waving it in deliberate, graceful motions.

Suddenly, things began to get very cloudy….


End file.
